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Monday, June 29, 2009

I created this one quite unintentionally. I had some fresh mushrooms I wanted to cook up before they got old, so I started throwing together things we had in the kitchen. This is what came out of that effort, and Sherry LOVES it.

Begin cooking rice in chicken stock, following package directions. Set aside when done. Place bacon in skillet and cook till nearly crisp. Set aside. Heat oil in Dutch oven and begin coooking onion. After a couple of minutes, add the garlic, celery and bell pepper. Add mushrooms. Continue cooking until tender. Stir in mixed vegetables, bacon and sour kraut. Mix well, and continue cooking until all is well-blended and the vegetables are tender. Season with salt & pepper.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

My dear friend, Nikki Merritt, served this dish to the vestry. Once again, as we've come to expect from her, she hit a homer! Thank you, so much. (Nikki says this is from one of the Junior League of Charleston Cookbooks. When I read, "Receipts" in her email, I thought it was a typo. I've since learned, that's what they called recipes in Charleston in the 1800s. And who knows? Maybe they still do today.)

Monday, June 8, 2009

This place was formerly called "dpjc's cookbook," but that led to a lot of confusion as to who or what "dpjc" is.

The "dpjc" stands for "doss peace and justice center," a "virtual" institution created by the author who uses the pseudonym, "doss." It's a long and colorful story. I invite those of you curious to know more about the "center" to write me. For now, in the interest of peace, justice, and loving our neighbors, I offer these recipes to the world.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

I've been the head cook in our household since 1983, when I got laid off at the same time my wife returned to work from maternity leave. We soon discovered that I was a much better cook than she, and I enjoyed it much more than she.

I began writing notes and pasting recipes into a spiral bound "cookbook" my mother-in-law had hand written for my wife in 1971. By 1992, we'd joined the "computer age," and my younger brother gave me a DOS based cookbook program which I immediately began to populate with all the notes and recipes I'd collected over the years.

Then, shortly after that, I discovered the joys of HTML and the world wide web, and naturally began to publish my "cookbook" to the net.

The "book" went through several painful iterations, as I learned more about HTML, and more importantly, about the complex issues arising from trying to maintain a unified publication on the web. I learned the tedium of having to edit EVERY file on the website whenever I added ONE new recipe (I should NEVER have put a table of contents on EVERY recipe page.). I experimented with frames, but soon learned that frames were prone to show up great in one browser, and screwy in other browsers.

I went on for years, experimenting with different approaches, style sheets, etc., until one day it dawned on me that blogspot.com had done most of the hard work for me already. And that there was no need to re-invent the wheel.

In the meantime, I'd acquired a magnificent recipe manager program called Big Oven, that would automatically generate an HTML file for my recipes. I toyed with that for a while, and eventually settled on the simplified recipe format you see in this blog.

Many thanks to the good folks at blogspot, for making this so possible.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Because this cookbook uses the Blogger format, it will work a bit differently than cookbooks you've encountered before.

The top row of hyperlinks in the header above ("bread, dessert, meats," etc.) contains links to tables of contents for each food grouping. When you click on one of them, that table of contents will replace this page (Or whatever page happens to be in this space). The second row of hyperlinks points to other elements that are not necessarily recipes, but are items you mind find of interest.

Included there is a section for external links to other sites I find interesting or useful. Plus, if you want to view my posts chronologically (I can't imagine why, but this is a feature offered by our friends at blogger.), you can view them by month and year by going to the archives.

You might also check out categories where recipes and posts are gathered according to a common element such as "Cajun," "smoker," Mexican," etc. As you "jump" or scroll down the sidebar, hopefully you'll notice strategically placed "Back to the Top" hyperlinks. These should zap you back to the top of the page where the table of contents menu is. (We hope.) You'll get the hang of it. We hope you have a good time.

Each recipe has one (or more)"tag" associated with it. For instance, when I posted my shrimp enchiladas recipe, I "tagged" it as "Mexican" and as a "Seafood." The list of categories below are the "tags" associated with various recipes. Clicking on "grill," for instance will post every recipe in this cook book tagged as a "grill" recipe.

A Code of Ethics

"Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.

Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society's principles and standards of practice."